W.B. Yeats Quotes page 4

“Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?”

St. 2 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/

“Mock mockers after that
That would not lift a hand maybe
To help good, wise or great
To bar that foul storm out, for we
Traffic in mockery.”

No Second Troy http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1548/ The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)

“We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men's souls, that waver and give place
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.”

V, st. 4 The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/

“Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.”

St. 2
The Rose (1893), The Rose of the World

“Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.”

St. 4. Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/ Context: I write it out in a verse— MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.

“Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?”

Under Ben Bulben, VI
Last Poems (1936-1939)

“They say such different things at school.”

Leda and the Swan http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1523/, st. 3 The Tower (1928)

“The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.”

Michael Robartes and the Dancer
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)

“Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of Silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.”

Letter to Frederick J. Gregg (undated, Sligo, late summer, 1886)

“If soul may look and body touch,
Which is the more blest?”

The Magi http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1652/ Responsibilities (1914)

“All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?”

The Lady's Second Song http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1639/, st. 3 Last Poems (1936-1939)

“I agree about Shaw — he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.”

The Scholars http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1682/, st. 2 The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

“Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.”

Letter to George William Russell (1 July 1921)

“To be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there’s no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.”

The Great Day http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1626/ Last Poems (1936-1939)

“The true faith discovered was
When painted panel, statuary.
Glass-mosaic, window-glass,
Amended what was told awry
By some peasant gospeller.”

St. 7 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/

“I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words.”

Wisdom http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1759/ The Tower (1928)

“My temptation is quiet.
Here at life’s end
Neither loose imagination,
Nor the mill of the mind
Consuming its rag and bone,
Can make the truth known.”

St. 1 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/

“Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.”

An Acre of Grass http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1438/, st. 2 Last Poems (1936-1939)

“The friends that have it I do wrong
Whenever I remake a song
Should know what issue is at stake,
It is myself that I remake.”

Lapis Lazuli, st. 5
Last Poems (1936-1939)

“I know what wages beauty gives,
How hard a life her servant lives,
Yet praise the winters gone:
There is not a fool can call me friend,
And I may dine at journey’s end
With Landor and with Donne.”

The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, II, preliminary poem (1908)

“Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.”

To A Young Beauty http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1728/, st. 3 The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

“Odour of blood when Christ was slain
Made all platonic tolerance vain
And vain all Doric discipline.”

Letter to Lady Elizabeth Pelham (4 January 1939))

“A bloody and a sudden end,
Gunshot or a noose,
For Death who takes what man would keep,
Leaves what man would lose.”

II, st. 1 The Tower (1928), Two Songs From a Play http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1741/

“Does the imagination dwell the most
Upon a woman won or woman lost?”

John Kinsella’s Lament For Mrs. Mary Moore http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1520/', st. 1 Last Poems (1936-1939)

“Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labour of its unfamiliar thought.”

The Tower, II, st. 13
The Tower (1928)

“O what fine thought we had because we thought
That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.”

Letter to Olivia Shakespear (24 March 1927)

“Land of Heart's Desire,
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,
But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.”

I, st. 2 The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/

W.B. Yeats The Land of Heart's Desire

Source: The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), Lines 373–375

“Much did I rage when young,
Being by the world oppressed,
But now with flattering tongue
It speeds the parting guest.”

“I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind
That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind
All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved
Or boyish intellect approved,
With some appropriate commentary on each;
Until imagination brought
A fitter welcome; but a thought
Of that late death took all my heart for speech.”

Youth And Age http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1762/ The Tower (1928)

“Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.”

In Memory Of Major Robert Gregory, st. 12
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

“Nothing that we love over-much
Is ponderable to our touch.”

The Circus Animals' Desertion http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1603/, II, st. 3. Last Poems (1936-1939)

“Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.”

Towards Break of Day http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1740/, st. 3 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)

“I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.”

St. 3 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/

“Seek out reality, leave things that seem.”

His Phoenix http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1510/, refrain The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

Source: The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/, VII

“And God stands winding His lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in flight;
And love is less kind than the grey twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.”

“This melancholy London. I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.”

Into The Twilight http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1519/, st. 4 The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)

“I have found nothing half so good
As my long-planned half solitude,
Where I can sit up half the night
With some friend that has the wit
Not to allow his looks to tell
When I am unintelligible.”

Letter to Katharine Tynan (25 August 1888)

“You say, as I have often given tongue
In praise of what another's said or sung,
'Twere politic to do the like by these;
But was there ever a dog that praised his fleas?”

The Apparitions, st. 2
Last Poems (1936-1939)

“Whence had they come,
The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome?
What sacred drama through her body heaved
When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?”

To A Poet, Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitators of His and Mine http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1724/ The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)

“O but we dreamed to mend
Whatever mischief seemed
To afflict mankind, but now
That winds of winter blow
Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.”

Parnell's Funeral and Other Poems http://worldebooklibrary.com/eBooks/WorldeBookLibrary.com/ytpafu.htm (1935). Supernatural Songs http://worldebooklibrary.com/eBooks/WorldeBookLibrary.com/ytpafu.htm#1_0_7

“Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.”

III, st. 3 The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/

“Come near, that no more blinded by man’s fate,
I find under the boughs of love and hate,
In all poor foolish things that live a day,
Eternal beauty wandering on her way.”

Source: Crossways (1889), The Song Of The Happy Shepherd, l. 57.

“O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.”

To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time
The Rose (1893)